A system configured to control traveling of carriages each configured to convey an article such as a semiconductor in, for example, a production line producing semiconductors or the like is known in the art. Japanese Patent No. 5446055 describes a carriage system configured to control a distance between carriages by periodically reporting carriage statuses from a plurality of carriages to a ground controller and periodically transmitting traveling instructions from the ground controller to the carriages. Japanese Patent No. 4438095 describes that a controller estimates current positions of respective carriages on the basis of positions of which the controller is notified by the carriages, information indicating whether to turn into a branch or travel straight, and time, and searches a travel route for avoiding congestion on the basis of distribution of the current positions of the respective carriages estimated. By performing optimization processing of estimating future statuses on the basis of current statuses of carriages, for example, and determining travel speeds of the carriages, travel routes therefor, and the like on the basis of the estimated results as described above, conveyance efficiency can be expected to be improved.
Because the optimization processing described above is relatively complicated processing, software (program) for executing the processing needs verification of how the software actually operates and continual updates to improve the functions. When such an update of the software has been performed, it may be found that the updated software has a problem (bug, etc.). In that case, rollback processing for recovering the software to the state before being updated is usually performed by an operator, for example. By performing the rollback processing, normal processing using the software before being updated is restarted. However, until the rollback processing is completed, the optimization processing for determining operations of conveyance machines stops. Thus, the problem that operations of the conveyance machines stop and work of conveying articles stops may occur.
In view of this, it could be helpful to provide a conveyance control device and a conveyance control system that can prevent operations of conveyance machines from stopping.